European Parliament, Brussels, P9 CRE-PROV
(2020) 10-21 (3-128-0000).
Frau President. Honorable colleagues.
Today we speak on the EU’s possibilities of softening the
social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Such a desire proceeds
from a superficial, presumably high-minded viewpoint. Yet the question which
must be posed here is: Why at all should this duty [Aufgabe] be a duty of the EU?
The social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis
in the individual member states are, in the first place, very distinct. Second –
and still more important – social policy is certainly no duty of the EU, but
social policy is a national state duty and there it belongs. Each state can and
must give its own answer to social-political challenges.
What you are in fact pushing here is something quite
different and is, with permission, strikingly contrary to national state sovereignty. You
present yourselves here as generous rescuers only so as to acquire the power of
disposition over additional financial means and thereby build up your own
power. In this way, you ultimately only strive to pave the path to the EU’s own
statehood and, for that, quite purposefully use the COVID-19 crisis.
Yet the problems of this crisis must and can be solved by
and in the national states themselves. If the member states make use of
different preventative measures, then that is all to the good. Competition for
the best solution is always better than a falsely centralized strategy for all.
You could recognize in exemplary fashion your false
assessment in that you frankly impose a gigantic 750 billion euro general
Recovery Fund without first letting slip scarcely a single word as to what at
all shall be concretely done with the 750 billion. The whole of this, so as to
finance a reconstruction which is neither your duty nor will – despite all your
Cassandra cries – in fact be necessary on
this scale.
In that regard, you are certainly lively to add an
additional chapter to the history of the downfall of your assumption of power.
I say it to you yet again, quite unmistakably: This duty is present solely in
the national states.
[trans: tem]
